Stranded In The Jungle

by Steven Shaviro

The stories are everywhere: in books and films, on talk shows, on the
World Wide Web. Dr. John E. Mack of Harvard estimates that as many as
several million Americans may have been abducted by aliens in UFOs. His
1994 book Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens presents
representative case histories. Budd Hopkins gives a more detailed
report of one case in his 1987 book Intruders, later a TV miniseries.
And Whitley Strieber provides a gripping first-person account of being
abducted in his 1987 book Communion, later turned into a film. All the
stories are quite similar. The aliens are gray, hairless, about four
feet tall, with leathery skin and vaguely humanoid features. Their eyes
are deep, black, and unblinking, and have hypnotic power. If you look
directly into them, your will crumbles and you are paralyzed. The
encounters usually take place at night. The victims are mostly white
Middle Americans. They are snatched from their beds or their cars, and
taken aboard a UFO. They are stretched out on a sort of operating
table. First, the aliens take tissue samples. They impress strange
marks on the skin, like stigmata. They insert small implants into the
abductee's body. They stick long needles through the eyes, nose, or
ears, and on into the brain. Then they bring out the notorious anal
probe. Many witnesses have described this device. It's a thick metal
rod, about fourteen inches long. At one end, there is a tiny sphere
like a ball bearing. The sphere is surrounded by little prongs that
enclose it as in a wire cage, or open outward to let it roam freely.
When Strieber was penetrated by this tool, he says, "it seemed to swarm
into me as if it had a life of its own... I had the impression that I was
being raped... I have never felt so tiny, so helpless." No part of the
body is safe from these intrusions. But all in all, the aliens are less
interested in our anuses and brains than in our genitalia. They attach
suction devices to men's penises, milking them for sperm. They implant
embryos in women's wombs, only to extract them again a few months
later. The little alien fetuses are then placed in transparent tanks.
One abductee saw rows of these tanks stacked up against the wall, like
a display of Barbie dolls in a toy store window. Perhaps the aliens are
trying to breed a hybrid species, mixing their genes with ours. Or
maybe they can't even reproduce on their own, but need help from our
bodies and DNA. We service them as bees do flowers. In any case, the
aliens seem clinically detached during these procedures. Sex is
evidently not joyous or fulfilling for them. "They don't know what a
porn movie is," one victim remarks. "[They don't] understand the
concept of voyeurism or anything like that." Their interest in us is
not prurient, nor do they bear us malice. It's just that they don't
realize how much it all hurts. As Hopkins puts it, "they simply appear
unable for the most part to understand us, our feelings, our terror,
our love for one another." They fail to grasp even the simplest things
about us, like how we dress or how we do our hair. Human emotions are
"like candy" or "like a drug" to them, one abductee explains, a
dangerous luxury in which they dare not indulge. No wonder our close
encounters end in mutual misunderstanding. Maybe their hybrid breeding
project is an effort to close the gap. If so, it is an endeavor gone
sadly awry. They re-abduct women whose wombs they have previously
'borrowed.' The surrogate mother is brought to meet her putative
offspring. The aliens seem to expect some grand scene of
reconciliation. But it's hard for us to regard these young with
ordinary human affection. They do not seem like anything of ours. They
are silent, frail, and disturbingly listless. They show no signs of
love, nor even of recognition. They require a colder, more rarefied
atmosphere than we can provide. No, these odd children do not join the
human to the alien. Rather, they are living reminders of how vast a
distance remains. They embody, not our hopes and dreams, but something
we cannot even imagine. If they are a part of us, it's the part that we
have lost and will never find again. The yearning we feel towards them
is like an ache in a phantom limb. What does it mean to be intimate,
against your will, with a stranger? Once you have been abducted, you
are stranded between two worlds. You've been exiled from the one,
without finding refuge in the other.